Cartoon Violence Has To Look At The Same Damn Thing Day After Day, And What Thanks Does It Get?
It's Friday afternoon. Have you tendered your resignation yet? No? Well, if you're not planning on spending more time with your family, you'll haveplentyof time to catch up with Today's Cartoons . But we wouldn't want you to wade through that cesspool alone -- no, we have with us, as always, trusty editorial cartoon sherpa The Comics Curmudgeon to guide you on your journey.
This week: take a guess. Immigration, gas prices, and fat kids. Oh, and a Clinton dick joke. Just like Imus! After the jump, the weekly cartoon roundup Rich Cohen finds endlessly unamusing.
Say! Politics! There sure is a lot of it going on! Yes, so many things out there to comment on like, um ... forestry legislation, and, uh ... probably something to do with the, uh, war, or, well, wars, I guess and, uh ...
Oh, hell. We, the media elite who monitor your ruling classes, can barely be bothered to pay attention to more than, say, three major controversies at any given time. And really, since every issue is best boiled down to either "fer it" or "again' it", there are only so many political cartoons that you can do about one of said issues, right? So, naturally, you're gonna get some repeats. Fortunately, you have professional cartoon-distinguishers such as ourselves to help you suss out the subtle nuances and determine who came out ahead in the battle for America's political funnybone. If this batch of cartoons is representative, said nuances mostly seem to involve fat guys in undershirts.
(Yeah, we know that it's sort of ironic that we ourselves have done something very much like this before . But when we do it, it's not creative bankruptcy; it's asemi-recurring feature!So just lay off.)
Lady Liberty vs. the Aliens
Good: Tiny aliens swarm over the jolly green symbolic giant, whose head and arm only are exposed, evoking fond memories of the end of the originalPlanet of the Apes.But her question supposed to be sarcastic or not? What the hell kind of political cartoon is this if it can't tell me clearly how I'm supposed to think?
Better: The torch lying on its side is a nice, poignant image, with the sign in her hand as a replacement as a nice touch. It bothers me that she's walking away from the podium, though -- she lives on anisland!The geography's all effed up! It also bothers me that the geography of a political cartoon involving a walking Statue of Liberty bothers me.
Best: If you could replace the current majestic Statue of Liberty with a bald, sweaty, portly dude in a wifebeater, would you? Please? And then move on to give the Jefferson Memorial a mullet?
No more soda is school
Good: Yet another depiction of a ludicrously obese American youth; we know you love to draw fat kids, fellas, but it's getting old. On the other hand, I find the label "U.S. KIDZ" goofily charming.
Better: I love the image of the kids clinging desperately to the Coke machine -- they dotoocare about things, and are willing to sacrifice their bodies in an act of civil disobedience. And the schoolteacher's "Wait! Wait!!" is ambiguous: does she want to prevent the maintenance man from making off with half her class, or is she too panicking at the thought of spending eight hours in a public elementary school without access to sweet, sweet soda pop?
Best: Terrorism, budget deficits, childhood obesity: There isn't anything that isn't somehow tied into Bill Clinton getting his dick sucked, is there? Of course, the idea that this thought would be going through Clinton's head is laughable: We all know he liked his ladies with some meat on their bones.
Gas is 'spensive
Good: As usual with Danziger, the beauty is in the details: The pinched look of contempt on the face of the woman in the truck, and the expression of sullen, apathetic defiance on the face of the poor gasman.
Better: Whee! Is there any political issue thatcan'tbe made more cartoonable with a gratuitous reference to Anna Nicole Smith? Heck, no! Still, it's a good thing one of these anachronistically bow-tied attendants identified America's favorite Supreme Court litigant by name, because this caricature looks not a bit like her.
Best: When George Bush made that loopy reference to "human-animal hybrids" in his State of the Union address, didn't you think to yourself, "Wouldn't it be awesome if Tucker Carlson was the first victim of such a monstrous perversion of science, and he wandered the streets, begging for help, the good townspeople recoiling in terror from his freakish, elephantine vision, until eventually he ended his torment the only way he could: By filling his mutated, animalistic skull with gasoline?" What? You didn't think anything like that at all? Uh, never mind, then. --THE COMICS CURMUDGEON